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Forum:Category for OTL stories
I know that there is an "Historical Novels" category but it might be useful and helpful to create a category called "Works Set in OTL" to include short stories as well. I was rather surprised that there wasn't one already, to be honest. What do other people think? GusF (talk) 01:07, February 19, 2014 (UTC) :Could you list a few such stories? I'm having trouble coming up with any offhand. Turtle Fan (talk) 20:18, February 19, 2014 (UTC) :: "Under St. Peter's", "Gentlemen of the Shade", "He Woke in Darkness", "The Last Reunion", "The Star and the Rockets" and "Death in Vesunna". GusF (talk) 21:22, February 19, 2014 (UTC) ::Fantasy/Horror, fantasy, fantasy, fantasy, SciFi, SciFi. The thing is that Turtledove is a genre writer so I think his OTL stories fit one of the other, non-althistory sub-cats. The closest would be his near future slice-of-life SF stories like Supervolcano although I suppose stories like "The Last Reunion" could fit since the fantasy is a surprise twist at the end. ML4E (talk) 22:09, February 19, 2014 (UTC) :::True, but being a genre piece and being set in OTL isn't mutually exclusive. TR (talk) 23:52, February 19, 2014 (UTC) :::: I agree with TR. GusF (talk) 00:51, February 20, 2014 (UTC) ::::But the category being discussed isn't for short stories with an OTL setting. It's for a sister category to Historical Novels. Everything in that category is straight historical fiction devoid of any science fiction, fantasy, supernatural, time-travel, or AH elements. That's what Gus has called for, isn't it? And not one of the short stories he's named qualifies. Turtle Fan (talk) 20:11, February 20, 2014 (UTC) :::::If I'm reading it right, yes, Gus seems to be proposing a category broadly for stories (short and long form) with an OTL setting. The Historical Novels would probably be a subcat, rather than a sister cat for short stories. (Incidentally: "Farmers' Law", "Crybaby" and "The Girl Who Took Lessons" could be examples "non-genre" fiction). TR (talk) 20:55, February 20, 2014 (UTC) ::::::I was thinking that both sorts of stories - those devoid of genre elements and those with genre elements set in OTL - would qualify. Hence why I named the genre stories that I did. I also thought of Historical Novels as a subcategory rather than a sister cat, which is why the title for the category that I proposed was "Works Set in OTL" rather than "Short Stories Set in OTL". The way that I see it, "Work Set in OTL" could cover both story types. GusF (talk) 22:09, February 20, 2014 (UTC) ::Well I don't object to it but it seems somewhat redundant to me. If a story isn't in the AH category and not a fantasy set in an imaginary world like e.g. Videssos Series or Detina, then it would be set OTL. Unless you intend to limit it to pesent and near past like Supervolcano and "The Last Reunion" and exclude far future SF like "Nasty, Brutish, &. . ." or Noninterference? ML4E (talk) 18:24, February 21, 2014 (UTC) :::I'm a bit unsure about the inclusion of future stories, or at least some of them. Take, for instance, "The Emperor's Return", which features the Soviet Union and Greece invading Turkey in June 2003. When it was written in 1990, that was possible but it obviously didn't happen in reality (not least because the USSR was long gone by then!) so it's since been rendered an unofficial retroactive alternate history story. Placing such a story in an OTL category might seem a bit odd even if Turtledove intended it to be an OTL story in the first place. What does everyone else think? GusF (talk) 21:11, February 21, 2014 (UTC) :::We do have the Category:Works Set in the Present for stories, duh, set in the present of when the work was written. I would say near future stories that are rendered obsolete due to the passage of time should still be considered OTL. How about "The Road Not Taken"? It was published in 1985 and set in 2039. Would that be considered far future or near future? It's still OTL since the Roxolani can arrive on time with the Earth technology plausible (complete with a third Mars mission in progress). ML4E (talk) 22:20, February 21, 2014 (UTC) ::::I would say stories set in the near future should not qualify at all. "The Emperor's Return" is a dramatic example of a danger that any of them could be rendered inappropriate, and the phrase OTL implies a very strict adherence to historical accuracy. As ML4E recently pointed out, time machines don't exist, but in GotS Turtledove did state that they would be operational in January 2014; and more seriously, current events in South Africa do not at all resemble what few hints Rhoodie dropped about the world he left, even after correcting for his heavy reporting bias. One can't be historically accurate about things that haven't happened yet; even Hari Seldon was only able to work out the broadest strokes. ::::Actually, "set in OTL" is a somewhat dangerous name, I think. OTL is a term useful pretty much exclusively for differentiating something from alternate history. On a Turtledove wiki that's going to come up a lot, but even here it can be applied too broadly. It strikes me that we'd need a better term, and we might do better to call it "Stories with a contemporary setting," and on the category page emphasize that we mean contemporary not just in terms of having the same date, but of being in the same historical continuity. ::::Another option might be to name the category "Literary Fiction," thus differentiating it from the various categories of genre fiction that are far more common here. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:09, February 22, 2014 (UTC) Category:Forum